that held “the power of the purse” restricted the exercise of sovereignty. Most rulers no doubt preferred to

“live of their own,” but this was rarely possible in time

of war.

The only solution to this dilemma was to convince

hard-headed representatives of the landholding and

merchant classes to grant at least some taxes on a perpetual basis on the theory that threats to the kingdom’s

integrity would never end. This was not easy, even in

the interminable chaos of the Hundred Years’ War, but

the states that succeeded, notably France and Castile,

The Renaissance: Political Renewal and Intellectual Change 235

became the great powers of the succeeding age. Not

only did perpetual taxes make the revenues of these

countries greater in real terms than those of their neighbors, but they also made them predictable. Budgeting

for the long term became possible without the interference of elected bodies whose interests were not necessarily those of the prince. Above all, perpetual taxes

made borrowing money easier because lenders could be

guaranteed a return based on projected revenues.

Whether perpetual or temporary, late medieval and

early modern taxes were usually levied on some form of

moveable property. The governments of the day lacked

the administrative technology to monitor personal incomes, and land, though it was the principle form of

wealth, was usually tax exempt for a variety of political

and historical reasons. The goods of merchants and artisans were fair game, as were the commodities offered

for sale by peasants. Taxes on moveable property were

regressive in the sense that wealthy landholders and

rentiers could usually avoid them, but their impact on

other social groups is hard to measure. Collection was

never uniform and was rarely undertaken directly by

the state. The most common practice was to negotiate

the proposed yield from a tax with local authorities

who would then be responsible for its collection. The

rates collected were usually not those set by the legislation. Whatever their amount, late medieval taxes fell

predominantly on the most economically active, if not

the richest, segments of the population.

Governments knew this and attempted to encourage the transfer of resources from tax-exempt to taxable

activities. This is one reason for their almost universal

efforts to foster trade, mining, and manufacturing. It

also helps to explain the policy, common to both England and Castile, of favoring sheepherders at the expense of those who cultivated the soil. Wool could be

taxed; subsistence agriculture could not. Such policies

clearly influenced economic development, but their

overall impact on growth or on public well-being may

have been negative. Taxes were ultimately paid by the

consumer and were therefore a burden to be added to

those already imposed by landholders in their efforts to

compensate for falling rents.

Moreover, the maximization of tax yields often required changes in land use. Governments, through the

decisions of their prerogative courts, tended to favor

the extension of personal property rights over the

claims of feudal privilege. An example was the English

policy of encouraging landholders to enclose common

lands for grazing. This practice, which reached a peak

at the beginning of the sixteenth century, broke feudal

precedent and sometimes forced the expulsion of peasants who needed the marginal income provided by the

commons for survival. As Sir Thomas More put it, “[I]n

England, sheep eat men.” This was perhaps an extreme

case, and enclosures may not have been as common as

More thought, but everywhere the extension of personal property rights to land had the immediate effect

of favoring governments and landholders at the expense of peasants. Thus, the most insistent demand of

German peasant revolutionaries was for a return to the

“old law” that protected their feudal status.

If one part of state building was finding new revenues, the other was developing more efficient mechanisms by which they could be spent. Most late

medieval states found this more difficult than locating

the money in the first place. Bureaucracies whose purpose was to supply the needs of war grew like mushrooms but remained inefficient by modern standards

until after the industrial revolution. They were inhibited in part by the same sense of corporate and personal

privilege that resisted other aspects of state growth, but

the underlying problem was structural. Communications were poor, and no precedent had been set for

many basic administrative procedures. Archives, the basic tool of record keeping, were rare before the midsixteenth century. Censuses were unknown outside the

Italian city-states, and how they might have been conducted in such kingdoms as France with their immense

distances and isolated populations is hard to imagine.

To make matters worse, the costs of war continued to

grow more rapidly than the sources of revenue. Neither

taxation nor the development of public credit kept

pace, and money was often in desperately short supply.

Because soldiers and officials were often paid poorly

and at irregular intervals, governments were forced to

tolerate high levels of what would today be called corruption. Bribery, the sale of offices, and the misappropriation of funds were common even in those states

that prided themselves on their high administrative

standards. The situation would improve under the “absolutist” regimes of the eighteenth century, but the improvements were relative.

No two states were alike. Though all were confronted with the need for consolidation and new revenues, they achieved their objectives in different ways

according to their circumstances and traditions. The

city-states of Italy evolved along lines of their own and

have been considered separately in Chapter 10. The

sovereign kingdoms and principalities must be examined individually or in regional groups if their development is to be understood.

236 Chapter 13

The Iberian Kingdoms: Ferdinand and Isabella

The Iberian Peninsula was in some ways an unlikely

birthplace for two of the most successful early modern

states. Difficult terrain and an average annual rainfall of

twenty inches or less produced little surplus wealth.

Ethnic, political, and religious differences were great. In

1400 no fewer than five kingdoms shared this rugged

land. Portugal was probably the most homogeneous,

though it possessed significant Muslim and Jewish minorities. Castile, comprising the two ancient kingdoms

of León and Castile, contained not only Jews and Muslims, but also Basques and Galicians who, though devoutly Christian, possessed their own languages and

cultures. The kingdom of Aragon had three separate regions: Aragon, Cataluña, and Valencia. Each of them

had its own language and traditions, though the

Aragonese spoke Castilian and some linguists regard

Valencian as a dialect of Catalan. Finally, there was the

kingdom of Granada, the last but still vigorous remnant

of the Islamic Empire on European soil, and the tiny

mountain kingdom of Navarre straddling the Pyrenees

between Castile and France.

Portugal was the first European state to achieve

consolidation, just as it would be the first to acquire an

overseas empire. During most of the fourteenth century, it suffered like other monarchies from intrigue, dynastic failures, and ill-advised forays into the Hundred

Years’ War. In 1385 the Portuguese Cortes solved a succession crisis by crowning the late king’s illegitimate

son as John I. In the same year, John defeated the

Castilians in a decisive battle at Aljubarrotta and suppressed most of the old feudal nobility, many of whom

had supported the enemy. Under his descendants, the

house of Avis, Portugal avoided the revolts and dynastic

failures that troubled other states and evolved virtually

without interruption until 1580.

Spain was another matter. Aragon and Castile had

long been troubled by civil wars. Castile established a

precedent for perpetual taxes in 1367, but the usurpation of Enrique of Trastámara left the crown dependent

upon the nobles who had supported him. His successors, especially Juan II and Enrique IV “the Impotent,”

were incapable of maintaining order, in part because

their favorites aroused the jealousy of the grandees.

The accession of Enrique’s half-sister Isabella and her

marriage to Ferdinand of Aragon brought an end to the

period of anarchy and led to the eventual union of the

two kingdoms. Isabella and Ferdinand inherited their

respective thrones in 1479, a decade after their marriage. Each ruled independently, but they cooperated

on the broad outlines of policy, and an agreement was

reached that their heirs would rule a united Spain by

hereditary right.

The program of the Catholic kings, as they were

called, was greatly assisted by the weariness brought on

by decades of civil strife. The nobles of Castile were

pacified by confirming their titles to all lands acquired

by them, legally or illegally, before 1466 and by the judicious granting of mayorazgos or entails permitting

them to exclude younger children from their inheritances. This was important because, under Spanish law,

property was normally divided equally among the heirs,

a practice that tended to deplete a family’s wealth and

influence over time. In return, the grandees agreed to

give up all the land they had taken illegally after 1466

and to disband their private armies.

The towns, too, had suffered in the civil wars.

Clientage and kinship ties were powerful in Castilian

society, and many cities had fallen under the control of

factions that persecuted their rivals mercilessly. At the

Cortes of Toledo in 1480 the royal towns of Castile

agreed to the appointment of corregidores, royal officials

who would reside in the city, protect the interests of

the crown, and supervise elections. This ensured a high

degree of royal authority over city governments and

over those who were elected to represent them in the

Cortes. The consequent willingness of this body to

support new taxes and other royal initiatives was to become an important cornerstone of Spanish power.

None of these measures applied to Aragon. To ensure domestic peace, Ferdinand was forced to confirm a

series of rights and privileges granted by his father in

1472 at the height of the civil wars. These concessions,

however, were less important than they might appear.

The kingdom of Aragon was far smaller than Castile,

and its most vital region, Cataluña, had been declining

economically for more than a century. Castile was destined to be the dominant partner in this union of the

crowns, and its dominance was only enhanced by its

centralized institutions and higher level of taxation. In

both kingdoms, administration was reformed and the

crown’s already extensive control over church appointments was strengthened.

With their realms at peace, the monarchs turned

their attention to the kingdom of Granada. After ten

years of bitter warfare, the Muslim state was conquered

in 1492, the same year in which Columbus sailed for

the New World. It was also the year in which the Jews

were expelled from Spain, for the Catholic kings were

committed to a policy of religious uniformity. Fanned

by popular preachers, anti-Jewish sentiment had led to

The Renaissance: Political Renewal and Intellectual Change 237

NORWAY

SWEDEN

Stockholm

Edinburgh

IRELAND

Dublin

PRINCIPALITY

OF MOSCOW

Riga

North

Sea

TEUTONIC

ORDER

DENMARK

ENGLAND

WALES

Hamburg

Moscow

Smolensk

Lübeck

Danzig

Brandenburg

LITHUANIA

HOLY

R

ine

Rh

Oxford London

ROMAN

Cologne

POLAND

Prague

Calais HABSBURG . EMPIRE

Mainz

Cracow

LANDS

BOHEMIA

Paris

Nuremberg

Dan

u b e Vienna C a r p a t h

ian

Augsburg

FRANCE

R.

.

s

t

Pest

Orléans

M

HABSBURGBuda

BURGUNDY

LANDS

p s Milan

HUNGARY

Lyons

Venice

Poitiers

Po R.

Belgrade

Genoa

l

A

Corsica

ARAGON

Rome

Barcelona

nd

s

R.

Lisbon

Balea

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r

sl

ic I

Se

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CASTILE

PORTUGAL Toledo

i

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o

PAPAL a ti

c

STATES

a

Naples

Black Sea

Constantinople

Sardinia

a

OTTOMAN

Sicily

Granada

EMPIRE

Athens

T a u ru s M t s .

Tunis

600

300

900 Kilometers

Cyprus

.

0

300

Mediterranean

R

es

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at

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Azov

BULGARIA

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MONTENEGRO

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Florence A

dr

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Novgorod

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Jerusalem

600 Miles

Alexandria

MAMLUK SULTANATE

MAP 13.1

 Europe in the Renaissance 

pogroms and a wave of forced conversions between

1390 and 1450. Many of these conversions were

thought to be false, and the Spanish Inquisition, an organization wholly unrelated to the Papal Inquisition,

was founded early in Ferdinand and Isabella’s reign to

root out conversos who had presumably returned to the

faith of their ancestors. Large numbers of converts were

executed or forced to do penance during the 1480s,

and their property was confiscated to help finance the

Granadan war. The Inquisition, as a church court, had

jurisdiction over only those who had been baptized.

The Jews who had escaped forced conversion were

comparatively few and usually poor, but even a small

minority was seen as a threat to the faith of the conversos. Those who still refused conversion were at last expelled. Some fled to Portugal, only to be expelled by

the Portuguese as well in 1496. Others went to North

Africa or found refuge within the Turkish Empire, while

a few eventually settled in the growing commercial

cities of the Low Countries.

The war for Granada and the supplies of money

guaranteed by the perpetual taxes and cooperative legislature of Castile enabled Ferdinand to create a formidable army that was put to almost constant use in the

last years of the reign. Through bluff, diplomacy, and

hard fighting, he restored Cerdanya and Rosseló to

Cataluña and conquered the ancient kingdom of

Navarre. When Charles VIII of France invaded Italy in

1495, Ferdinand used his actions as a pretext to intervene. This first phase of the Italian wars lasted until

1513. Under the command of Gonsalvo de Córdoba,

“the Great Captain,” Spanish armies devised a new

method of combining pikes with shot that defeated the

French and their Swiss mercenaries and drove them

238 Chapter 13

[ DOCUMENT 13.1 [

Complaints of the French Estates General, 1484

When the French Estates General brought together representatives of the

clergy, the nobility, and the commons (or third estate), these representatives produced pamphlets known as cahiers, describing their grievances. The following excerpt from a cahier of 1484 gives a vivid

complaint of the third estate against royal taxation.

One cannot imagine the persecution, poverty, and misery

that the little people have suffered, and still suffer in many

ways.

First of all, no region has been safe from the continual

coming and going of armies, living off the poor. . . . One

should note with pity the injustice, the iniquity, suffered

by the poor: the armies are hired to defend them, yet

these armies oppress them the most. The poor laborer

must hire the soldiers who beat him, evict him from his

house, make him sleep on the ground, and consume his

substance. . . . When the poor laborer has worked long,

weary, sweaty days, when he has harvested those fruits of

from the peninsula. Spain added the kingdoms of Sicily

and Naples to its growing empire and became the dominant power in Italian affairs at the expense of Italy’s

independence.

Isabella died in 1504; Ferdinand in 1516. So firm

were the foundations they had built that the two

crowns were able to survive the unpopular regency of

Cardinal Francisco Jiménez (or Ximénez) de Cisneros

in Castile. The cardinal not only preserved the authority of the crown, but also made substantial progress in

reforming abuses in the Spanish church and in improving the education of the clergy. When the grandson of

the Catholic kings, the emperor Charles V, ascended

the two thrones and unified them in 1522, he inherited

a realm that stretched from Italy to Mexico, the finest

army in Europe, and a regular income from taxes that

rested firmly on the shoulders of Castilian taxpayers.

France: Charles VII and Louis XI

France, too, emerged from the Hundred Years’ War

with perpetual taxes that freed its monarchs from their

dependence on representative institutions. The most

important of these was the taille, a direct tax of feudal

his labor from which he expects to live, they come to take

a share of it from him, to pay the armed men who may

come to beat him soon. . . . If God did not speak to the

poor and give them patience, they would succumb in

despair.

For the intolerable burden of the taille, and the

taxes—which the poor people of this kingdom have not

carried alone, to be sure, because that is impossible—the

burden under which they have died from hunger and

poverty, the mere description of these taxes would cause

infinite sadness and woe, tears of woe and pity, great sighs

and groans from sorrowful hearts. And that is not mentioning the enormous evils that followed, the injustice, the

violence, and the extortion whereby these taxes were imposed and seized.